The Peter Navarro I Know

I’ve had the honor of working closely with Dr. Peter Navarro for more than twenty years as his student, coauthor, and colleague. Watching my friend pilloried and smeared in the media compelled me to share my inside view of America’s newest political prisoner.

I first met Peter Navarro in the Fall of 2001 as an Executive MBA student at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Navarro’s macroeconomics class was the most popular offering at the Merage School of Business. His “inverted” course pushed all the rote learning into video lectures, while students spent their in-class hours analyzing real world events through an economic lens and participating in robust conversations about policy that permitted no safe spaces. Freedom of speech ruled. Strong opinions were encouraged and challenged.

The Merage faculty were excellent, but Dr. Navarro was the rock star. Students voted him their annual teaching award eight times between 1998 and 2015. In 2016, the UCI Faculty Senate selected Peter, from among 2,500 professors, for the prestigious distinguished faculty award for teaching.

In 2008, I entered the Merage PhD program. My presumed PhD advisor had a surprising last-minute relocation, but Peter immediately stepped in to support me. He was a tough but holistic advisor and mentor. Demanding, along with a lot of research, that I exercise daily. We often swam laps together at lunch. I learned to teach macroeconomics, economic forecasting, and counter-cyclical business strategies. While Alan Greenspan famously “never saw it coming”, Peter Navarro nailed the Great Recession. Peter’s favorite indicators were dead on. I sold my investment properties, exited the stock market, and went short in fall of 2008. I then bought gold, real estate and cars at fire sale prices in 2009. I contributed to Peter’s forecasting and investment book, Always a Winner.

Criticizing Communist China is a bad career move for a professor. CCP proxies, organized Chinese students, and Chinese money wield great power in American universities. Many of our collogues took executive teaching contracts and consulting gigs in China or from China-tied multinationals. There was also lucrative work for economists at the DC think tanks funded by the Wall Street Banks that were eagerly selling America’s industrial base to the communists.

Instead, Peter and I co-wrote a book, Death by China: Confronting the Dragon, A Global Call to Action (Pearson 2011) and produced a film with the same name. Peter insisted that we focus on the real human suffering that bad American trade and national security policies were enabling at home and in China. We also engaged with many brave voices demanding a reevaluation of America’s broken trade policies.

I was excited to see Peter join the 2016 Trump campaign but knew that rebuilding America’s industrial base while maintaining economic expansion was a challenge. On election night, I texted Peter, “Congratulations!, but the Trump WH has inherited a baked-in Obama recession, that the media will pin on you.” 

Peter proved me wrong. He was on CNBC the next morning, with the Dow futures pointing straight towards Antarctica, fearlessly outlining Trump’s four-point plan to slash taxes, reduce regulations, cut energy costs, and reform trade. He predicted stronger growth, and the Dow above 25,000. The Trump administration delivered peace, growth, and trade reform, including tariffs without a “trade war.” The economy hummed along with historically low unemployment rate and nary a sign of inflation. Still, the Wall Street Journal twice ran headlines proclaiming a “Navarro Recession.” 

I was fortunate to have obtained appointments with Trump’s space team, independent of my work with Peter. On the afternoon of January 31, 2020, I was in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) discussing a new opportunity and dropped in to see Peter. He was out, but his office offered a fine view of the West Wing and a minimalist décor. The walls held letters of thanks from American employers. A “Trump Time” clock ticked as the Wuhan Coronavirus silently crept into America. Navarro was in the Situation Room convincing President Trump to ban flights from China, over globalists’ objections. China had restricted internal flights from Wuhan but was still eagerly exporting infected flyers to America. Trump’s prudent decision to back Peter afforded America a bit more time to ramp up our pandemic response and likely saved thousands of lives.

Days earlier, Peter had penned a prophetic memo warning of a half million American deaths and trillions in economic losses. Dr. Anthony Fauci, on the other hand, was assuring radio listeners that the “American people should not be worried or frightened” by the virus which he said presented a “very, very low risk.”

I visited the EEOB again on February 24 and April 17 and observed Peter redirecting his small team to secure badly needed PPE supplies, find ways to ramp up the production of ventilators and help launch Operation Warp Speed. It worked. Even CNN reported, “Executives in the ventilator industry praised open lines of communication with federal agencies and White House officials, including Navarro, working on supply chain issues.” However, no good deed goes unpunished in the swamp.

Rather than acknowledging these noble efforts, the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, issued the good doctor a subpoena! President Trump instructed Peter, “To protect executive privilege and not let these unhinged Democrats discredit our great accomplishments.” Navarro’s memo of March 1, 2020, posted by that committee, details a prescient plan that would have saved thousands of lives and billions of dollars if much of it had not been thwarted by globalists and China compromised officials who should have been working to protect Americans from China’s virus. BEFORE YOU JUDGE PETER NAVARRO READ THIS MEMO. America will be lucky to have him at the President’s side in 2025.

Dr. Greg Autry is a guest columnist for Peter Navarro’s Taking Back Trump’s America. Dr. Autry is the coauthor, with Peter Navarro, of Death by China: Confronting the Dragon, a Global Call to Action and the forthcoming book Red Moon Rising: How America Will be China on the Final Frontier. He served on the Trump Presidential Transition Team and as White House Liaison at NASA. In 2020, President Trump nominated him to be the Chief Financial Officer at NASA. Follow him on X or Truth at @GregWAutry.

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